Saturday, December 22, 2007

Boy Scout Motto

One of my favorite sayings is "Be Prepared". So here we are all prepared. Not that I don't procrastinate. Today I finally bought a new futon mattress for the futon frame I've had for years but always had a regular mattress on it because I never used it as a couch. Ikea is a wonderous and magical place which also provided me with the new curtains for this room ... finally.

Here's the whelping box with pigrails that I built myself thank you very much. Gosh I'm handy.

I had help from Phil because I couldn't cut the rails to the right length with my chicken arms. It came together quite well and I'm rather pleased with it. I hope that the pigrails prevent any more mishaps with puppies and that everyone grows up safe from their clumsy mom. The base is actually pieces of soft foam for Halo's comfort, then paper then towels. The cat was all aswither about the newpaper and pounced around there to mess it all up. Halo won't care, she's going to rip it to shreds anyway. She's already scraping her bedding together for a few minutes at night and she normally doesn't do that so I know we're both physically and phsychologically getting down the the wire. She will be come even more clingy in the next few days.

Why are we prepared? Well, here's Halo day 58 ... suffering from what I would call self pity. She is snoring quite a bit now and there's a lot of shallow breathing. I can imagine the puppies are pressing against her diaphram and making her lungs compress slightly, especially when she is scrunched into a little ball of sleep. Currently she is recovering for a leisurely walk at the park - it takes a lot out of her to go for a walk but I think it's important for her to get out and stretch her legs a bit. The Boy just does laps around us anyway so I walk slowly and Halo and Petal trundle along; finally they are both moving at the same pace. Tomorrow will be our last walk before puppies as her size is pretty substantial and I don't want to stress her body too much.

We have plans to go to my friend Tanja's house for Christmas Eve and I'm supposed to go to my parent's for Christmas Day. I'm diligently checking Halo's temperature watching for a drop so once that happens plans may change. Right now she's bang on 37.9 Celcius in the evening and between 37.4 - .6 in the morning. Last time her temperature dropped quite markedly so I knew things were imminent. She has always been a very reliable dog in all regards.

Puppies aren't due til Boxing Day which is day 63 but I'm thinking that given her size and her accelerated nesting behaviour we might be looking at a day or so sooner. Christmas babies!